North and South as Distinct Societies

The Industrialization of the North and Immigration

Transportation improvements included new roads, highways, canals, steamboats, and railroads domestically, as well as clipper ships for international travel all led to the development of the industrial economy of the North. Due to developments in transportation raw materials were transported to manufacturing centers and finished products were transported to markets more easily. This led to industrial growth which also resulted from capital investments in transportation and factories. Growth led to further investment and thus even more growth.

Improved transportation also linked East with West, pioneer settlers to unsettled lands and cities. Large numbers of people moved to the West in search of cheap land for farms and more opportunity in growing towns.

The early industrial system required a plentiful labor supply of women, children, immigrants, and migrants from the countryside to towns and cities. Labor conditions were often atrocious in the urban factories. The norm included sixteen hour days, six day work weeks, poor ventilation, unsafe factories and machines, dark and damp environments, and child labor. Many poor factory workers were so tired from work that they had no energy even to cook and had no money to buy food other than bread and tea. Entire families worked in factories just to earn enough to barely survive.

The atrocious conditions led labor to organize into unions. Unions became a force in American life by 1830's and 1840's. However, African-Americans and women were often excluded from union membership and faced inferior conditions. African-Americans were used as strikebreakers. Many of the battles fought by unions were lost as the government authorities and police sympathized and supported factory owners. Union organizers faced violence and the constant threat of being fired or placed on a blacklist.

Millions of immigrants were pouring into the country from Europe. Most were poor and faced terrible conditions in Europe and on the crowded disease ridden ships carrying them to America.

From 1830 to 1840: 40% from Ireland; 30% from Germany; 15% from Great Britain; others from other European countries. By 1860 the total number of immigrants was nearly 4.3 million or 14 percent of the U.S. population.

In 1846 a Potato Famine in Ireland forced many Irish to immigrate. Over one million died of starvation and malnutrition in Ireland out of a population of eight million. To escape the famine 1.9 million Irish came to the U.S. and formed the largest group of immigrants.

Many worked on roads, canals, railroads, cleaning streets, unloading coal, and in factories and mills. When they displaced American workers, frictions arose.

German immigrants were the second largest group. Many fled political oppression after democratic revolutions failed in Germany (1848). Most settled in the Middle West. They often worked as farmers, or in skilled occupations as shop keepers, artisans, brewers, distillers, bakers, tailors, and machinists.

For a variety of reasons immigrants were resented by many native born Americans. Some clung to old traditions, tended to live in enclaves or ethnic communities. Many native born Americans did not understand why the immigrants “refused” to adopt American habits and manners. Many Protestant Americans feared that Irish Catholics were more loyal to the Pope than to the United States and they resented their growing political power in city governments.

The Nativist Response displayed much intolerance. Anti-immigrant riots against immigrant workers, neighborhoods, and even churches, were commonplace and anti-immigrant organizations orders arose. These included the Sons of the Sires of '76, The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner (the Know-Nothing Party).

Despite the conflicts and difficulties immigrants and other workers faced, industrialization continued apace. The millions of immigrants provided their labor and acted as new consumers for the growing economy.

Swelling population, transportation improvements, growing industries and capitalism all supported and fed off one another. The North become more and more urban, even though millions continued to live in the countryside as farmers, particularly in the Middle West.

King Cotton and the Southern Social Structure

"Cotton is King" – in the 1840's and 1850's this phrase expressed the dominance of cotton over the southern economy. Cotton fields were seemingly endless, although there were also other staple crops such as tobacco, rice, and sugar. The cotton gin, invented in 1793, and the growth of textile manufacturing in the North and Europe increased the demand for cotton.

The diversity of southern topography and climate determined the crops. For example, sugar cane was grown near the warm Gulf of Mexico; long horn cattle was raised in Texas. Cotton was grown on fertile soil that had not been over-cultivated and exhausted of nutrients. Massive plantations coexisted with subsistence farms. Plantation owners dominated poor white farmers politically and socially.

Southern Social Groups:

Slaves: 4 million in 1860, 3.5 million on plantations, 500,000 in towns and cities.

Free Blacks: 250,000 by 1860, laws limiting their rights and freedom got progressively more harsh and restrictive. Free blacks were always in a precarious position, they never knew when they could be forced back into slavery.

Poor Whites: 10-20% of whites in the south, slang terms: "hillbillies" and "crackers"; many were frontier families and uneducated. They farmed poor soil in the rugged Appalachians. They were often malnourished and had poor health due to the fact that their land was not productive.

Laborers and Tenants: worked for low wages, did hard work, often too dangerous for expensive slaves, rented over-tilled fields, lived hard lives.

Small Farmers: almost self-sufficient, grew own food as well as small cash crops, independent, proud to own small plots of productive land, lived like small farmers in other parts of the country.

Slave owners: 1/4 of the white population in South. There were small slave owners and wealthy planters. Prosperous small slave owners rarely had more than 10 slaves. Planters had 20 slaves or more. There were only 50,000 planters in 1860. They controlled positions of political power. A very small minority had 100 slaves or more (only 1 percent of planters or about 2,300). Fourteen planters had 500 slaves and only one had as many as 1,000 slaves.

The planters were wealthy, the men were educated at prestigious universities, held leadership positions in county and state government, and were justices of the peace with broad powers in the counties. The richest lived in plantation mansions.

Plantations: Profitable or Not?

The pro-slavery argument: slavery was economically necessary for the plantation labor supply. The institution of slavery provided slaves with a stable and secure existence far superior to that of the poor factory workers of the North. Southern whites accepted this argument and identified slavery with the southern way of life, even if they owned no slaves. The question of whether or not slaves were better off than Northern factory workers was asked by the defenders of slavery who argued that Southern slave owners paternalistically took care of their slaves better than Northern factory owners took care of their workers because, unlike slave owners, factory owners felt no need to assume responsibility or care for their workers when they became sick or too old to work. Slaves themselves contributed to the growth of the American economy through their unpaid and forced labor, even while free African-Americans and slaves were deprived of the opportunities and freedoms enjoyed by most other Americans.